


The Wizard of Asgard

by finx



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Wizard of Oz - Fandom
Genre: Gen, WIP, but it could be a stand-alone, maybe with a LOT of good will, so unfinished, so very much a wip, sort of, this is literally the only chapter that exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:49:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4104871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers gets whisked away to the mystical land of Asgard, where the Good Witch of the South tells him that to rescue his friend Bucky and return home, he must follow the yellow brick road to the Golden City and ask the Wizard for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wizard of Asgard

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if/when I will ever finish this. I do have an overarching plan for the story, I just don't really know how to work everyone's story into a coherent whole and how I'm going to get the beginning to actually make sense, because right now it really doesn't. I will post everything, if I ever write it. For now, though, please enjoy this one-shot of Steve meeting the scarecrow.

Steve had been walking for three hours when he saw the scarecrow, crucified over an endless sea of dried cornstalks. He’d spent the last two of those at a dead run, and he was barely winded. Giddy laughter bubbled in his throat, and for once he didn’t have to worry about choking on it. Instead he let it roll out over the empty fields, bouncing off the rustling of the cornstalks as they muttered to each other in the slight breeze.

The scarecrow was sillhouetted by the afternoon sun, black against the light and vaguely ominous. There were no crows, but then, there was no corn. Steve squinted at it, trying to make out why it was so unsettling. Brooklyn had been rather short on corn fields and even shorter on scarecrows, but he was sure this one didn’t look right.

He slowed to a jog, finding he didn’t really want to draw level with it. It was set a few feet back from the road, looming darkly over the brown cornstalks. Steve stuttered to a stop as he realized why the scarecrow looked so wrong.

It was a woman. Her arms were tied to the wooden crossbeam, her body drooping forward in a way that suggested her feet were tied to the pole as well. Her head lolled behind her shoulders at a horrible angle. Her clothes were black, form-fitting, and caked with blood.

Steve felt a sick twist in his gut. Was this how criminals were punished here? Was this the work of the Witch of the East? If so, Steve was glad he was missing. Or was this dead woman a warning somehow to whoever walked this road? The wind blew suddenly cold against the sweat on the back of his neck, and Steve shivered.

The dried corn stretched out as far as he could see on all sides, the whispering silence of it suddenly putting him on edge. The sky was achingly blue, the brick at his feet was still cheerfully golden, but now the colors seemed bleached and false. Steve took a deep breath. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he reminded himself. He had to find Bucky. He started walking.

The worst was the smell. Steve kept his eyes fixed firmly ahead, but the faint coppery tint on the air was impossible to ignore. It grew stronger as the dead woman loomed larger and larger at the corner of his sight, layers of rust and iron seeping into his throat, filling it with the rich undertone that he couldn't even try to pretend was anything but the stench of far, far too much blood. Steve breathed through his mouth, shallowly, and tried not to gag. He tried to focus on the pain from his clenched fists. He was cold now, even though the breeze had all but died away, and he shivered as she walked. His neck prickled with the urge to turn. He wanted to speed past the woman, but his feet felt like lead.

Finally she passed out of Steve’s peripheral vision as he drew level with her, and it was all Steve could do not to start sprinting. He had just decided that maybe just this once there was no shame in running away when he heard a quiet groan.

Steve’s head spun around before he’d even registered the sound, and he nearly leaped out of his skin. The dead woman was staring straight at him.

Blood flowed sluggishly from a knot in her matted red hair and trickled in crimson rivers down her face. Her eyes were fiercely green, dark against her ashen skin. There was no emotion in them.

Steve felt frozen in place. He wet his lips to speak, but no words would come. The wind picked up. The cornstalks crashed against each other, the sound rising in a golden tide. Steve couldn’t move, could barely breathe, as the dead woman held his gaze over the clattering river of dried corn between them. It was only when the field had fallen back into restless whispering that the woman spoke.

“Here to finish the job?” She was hoarse, but her voice was even and didn’t crack.

Steve shook his head vehemently. “Who did this to you?” he rasped, before clearing his throat and repeating the question.

“Flying monkeys.”

Steve blinked. Either the woman had a severe concussion, or this place was a good deal weirder than it already seemed. Despite the head wound, Steve wasn’t sure which one was more likely.

The smell of blood forced its way suddenly back into Steve’s nose—he hadn’t even noticed when the wind swept it away—and he flinched, nearly choking on it. He just barely managed to avoid a coughing fit, and when he looked up again, the woman’s eyes were closed.

She looked exhausted, and Steve suddenly felt ashamed for just standing there. He lurched hastily forward, stumbling a little over his own feet. “Is there a knife or something around here?” he asked, patting his pockets to see if they held anything useful. The woman’s eyes flew open in alarm, then filled with fury. “Hey, no, I promise I’m not going to hurt you!” Steve backpedaled, hands up in surrender. “I’m going to get you down. I’m not too good with knots, but I can try to just untie them if you want.”

After a moment the woman nodded minutely, her eyes slightly less murderous, and Steve stepped off the road. The cornstalks snapped as he pushed against them, but when he reached the woman he saw there was a small clearing of broken foliage around her. There were a few dark splashes of reddish brown, and one sticky-looking puddle that Steve refused to look at. At the edge of it, curiously, was a discarded scarecrow, crumpled sadly in a pile of its own straw stuffing.

Steve showed her his empty hands again, then moved carefully forward until he could get a look at the knots around her ankles. His heart sank. Not only were they complex and unfamiliar, but the rope was soaked in blood. “It’s going to take me a while to untie this,” he confessed. “Sorry.”

“Dagger,” the woman said faintly. “By the scarecrow.” Steve glanced up at her; she was watching him steadily. He went over and rummaged through the straw until he caught the gleam of metal. The blade was coated in dried brown blood, and Steve swallowed hard. _Breathe,_ he reminded herself, and regretted it the moment the smell hit his nostrils. He fended off another coughing fit through sheer force of will, eyes watering with the strain, before turning away from the scarecrow's innards.

“I’m going to start with your wrists,” he told her carefully. “You can put your weight on me, then. I think I’ll be able to hold you.” The woman snorted, and Steve blushed. He raised the dagger slowly and started to saw at the rope. He had to stand on his toes to reach it.

The woman ended up bracing herself on his shoulders, shaking from the strain but refusing to just fall on him. It was awkward to cut at her ankles with her looming over his head, but he managed. He was grateful for the sharpness of the dagger, and refused to think about what it was kept sharp for.

As soon as she was free, the woman backed away, putting some distance between them. Steve let her. “Do you… do you want some food? I think I have bread, and maybe some cheese or something—” Steve reached for his pack, and only then realized that the dagger was gone from his hands. He frowned at the woman, who gazed back unapologetically. The dagger was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you gonna mug me or something? Cause I don’t think I have any money.”

The woman didn’t answer, didn’t change her expression at all. He noticed that despite the easy grace of her stance, she was trembling from exhaustion, and presumably also pain. Blood was still oozing down her cheek, dripping onto the crusted mud on her shoulders. It was probably all she could do not to collapse on the spot. Steve huffed out a sigh and sank to the ground, opening his pack as he did. He found a small bundle of sandwiches tucked neatly away and set one aside for the woman before digging into another. After a moment he remembered to pull out his waterskin and, after a few awkward gulps at it, leave it for the woman as well.

Steve was about halfway through his sandwich when she stooped to grab the waterskin. She nearly emptied it in a single go. Steve tried not to stare, or wonder when he’d get a chance to refill it.

The woman didn’t sit down, or move toward the sandwich. She just kept staring at Steve until he was too nervous to keep eating. He put the sandwich aside and rifled through his pack again, mostly so he wouldn’t have to meet the woman’s flat green eyes.

“Hey, look, bandages!” Steve pulled out a small pouch with a green star embroidered on the side and handed the woman a roll of gauze. “Actually you probably need more than just that, hang on… okay, I don't know how any of this stuff works. Do you want to just… here.” He shoved the whole pouch at the woman, whose face seemed to have fixed itself permanently into an impassive mask, possibly as an alternative to laughing at Steve.

“They might come back,” she said instead of taking it.

“Huh?” Steve replied eloquently.

“The monkeys.”

It took a moment for that to process. “Shit, you’re right, okay, let’s go, do you think it’s safe to take the road? Because that’s the way I have to go, but we can, like, hide in the corn if you think that’s better—” Steve scrambled to his feet, stuffing the first aid pouch and his half-eaten sandwich into his bag, only to find the woman wearing what looked like an actual expression under the blood. She seemed nonplussed. 

“Wait, which way are you going? Because I really need to get to the capital, but if you have somewhere close by you need to go, I could probably—”

“The road is safe for you,” the woman interrupted, pointedly. “They don’t know you cut me down.” She paused, then asked, in a tone that wanted to be casual but missed by a mile, “Why did you cut me down?”

“What, like I was going to just leave you there,” Steve scoffed. Then the rest of what she’d said caught up with him. “Oh. Right.” Clearly the woman wasn’t looking for company, particularly company that couldn’t stop babbling. Steve caught another heady whiff of drying blood and decided not to take offense. “Um, no problem, I mean, I get it, places to go, things to do. Me too, to be honest. Ought to get moving.” Steve had already been trying to calculate how far out of his way he could afford to go. The constant echo of _“they might find him…useful”_ was beating against his ribs again, fast and desperate. He was itching to move, to get back on the road, but— “Are you sure you’re good to walk out of here?”

The woman raised an eyebrow, shifting one of the streaks of dried blood as she did. It had a rather more dramatic effect than she’d probably intended. “I’ve walked away from worse,” she replied archly. She swayed a little as she said it. Then she turned carefully to the side, took three steps toward the wall of unbroken dead corn stalks, and crumpled soundlessly to the ground.


End file.
